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 MILES CANNON

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upon inquiry, was informed by the gray-haired captain that and they were taken on the head waters of the Marias river loaded at Fort Benton. "But, young man," he continued, "if

The hide it's buffalo you are looking for you are too late. of the last wild buffalo on the plains is in that shipment." My conjecture is that the deep winding furrows of the old Oregon were made

after the introduction of horses by the Spanish a period not later than the dawn of the seventeenth during that the recession of the vast herds of buffalo from and century,

trail

both the east and the west was the primary cause of

its

original

existence. I shall

now hasten my long-deferred who immortalized the Oregon

pioneers is evidenced by

conclusion. trail lived

That the

not in vain

some very interesting epochs in the annals of America. On May 2, 1843, 102 of these empire builders joined in a convention at Champoeg and set in motion the political machinery which added a star to the flag. Then a small unit of the emigration of the following year displeased, doubtless, on account of the crowded conditions of the Willamette coun-

opened farms near Olympia in 1845, gave us the great Washington, and still the flag goes marching on. Janu24, 1848, James W. Marshall, impelled by the purpose ary of building a mill, set his pick into the golden sands of Ameri-

try,

state of

can river and, lo the state of California was blazoned into the field of Old Glory. During the summer of 1860 a small !

blue

party of these irrepressible pioneers, under the leadership of E. D. Pierce, encamped on the Weippe meadows within a stone's throw of the Lewis and Clark trail of 55 years before,

and from the blaze of that camp fire we may now in fancy see the familiar outlines of the great state of Idaho; and still the marching on. Two years later John White and William Eads encamped on Willard's creek, and Montana in a short time came into the Union. The population of the five states mentioned is already in excess of 7,000,000 souls, and the assessed valuation of both real and personal property is perhaps more than $7,000,000,000, flag goes

though development

is

hardly begun.

The

far-seeing eye of